Technical Product Owner

Oxford University Press (OUP) is the world's largest university press. We serve the academic community by working in partnership with institutions and learned societies to bring a world of knowledge to the fingertips of students and researchers globally. Our goal is impact. Together with our academic communities, we curate and connect together the ideas that push their fields forward, so they can learn from them, add to them, and continue a virtuous cycle of scholarship.

Because we are a part of the academic community and guided in everything we do by our mission, we re-invest in our people, our publishing, and the world-leading research institution of which we are part. Our digital products empower researchers, educators, and learners through a diverse ecosystem of content-rich and data-driven platforms. These include learning and assessment services, online journals, research platforms, and integrations with web, eCommerce, and mobile applications.

About the Role

As our new Technical Product Owner (TPO), you will play a key role in translating divisional strategy into deliverable technical solutions. Working closely with Divisional Product Management, delivery teams, and stakeholders, you will define and manage technical product backlogs, ensure clarity of requirements, and support delivery through to release. You will ensure features meet business objectives by guiding solution design, supporting testing and rollout, and maintaining high-quality documentation. As the primary point of contact for assigned areas, you will provide expert guidance, foster alignment, and drive continuous improvement across platforms and products.

Key Responsibilities

• Product Backlog Management:
  Create and manage the technical product backlog for assigned products, platforms, capability areas, and applications. Collaborate with Product Managers, UX, and Analysts to break down high-level requirements into clear, deliverable user stories. Work with Subject Matter Experts across other areas of the business to identify impacts and dependencies, ensuring they are accounted for in the proposed solution. Define and maintain non-functional requirements through well-structured stories with clear acceptance criteria.
• Stakeholder Collaboration:
  Own and lead your assigned Platform, Product, Application, or Capability area(s), serving as the primary point of contact and subject matter expert. Provide clear guidance on technical feasibility and options to support informed decision-making. Engage stakeholders regularly to communicate and gather feedback, ensuring alignment with Product goals and standards. Own the technical components of features, making key decisions in collaboration with Divisional Product Management and Technology Leadership.
• Delivery Support:
  Collaborate with the Technical Delivery Lead and Divisional Product Management to manage the backlog and support delivery execution. Set clear iteration goals with delivery teams to align on shared delivery outcomes. Lead backlog refinement to ensure requirements and context are clearly understood by the delivery team. Continuously groom and prioritize the backlog to align with product goals and delivery timelines. Support iteration planning to maintain stable and predictable team velocity. Review completed work through demos, providing constructive feedback.
• Quality Assurance:
  Oversee changes to requirements, epics, and user stories throughout the delivery lifecycle, ensuring impacts to scope, cost, and schedule are assessed, documented, and communicated to stakeholders. Accept or reject deliverables based on defined acceptance criteria and non-functional requirements. Identify and manage technical risks and cross-team dependencies.
• Continuous Improvement:
  Drive continuous improvement in processes, documentation, and ways of working to increase the efficient running and support of Platforms, Products and applications. Collaborate with Application Architects to maintain up-to-date knowledge bases, including technical specifications and configurations for assigned platforms and products. Ensure documentation is clear, accessible, and shared with relevant stakeholders. Support change management with timely, accurate documentation. Deliver feature and capability demonstrations as needed to support understanding and adoption. Collaborate with the Principal Agile Coach and team members to identify and implement tooling and workflow improvements to support efficient backlog management and collaboration.
• Team Engagement:
  Actively participate in product ceremonies and support delivery teams. Engage in regular ceremonies such as stand-ups, sprint planning, demos, retrospectives, and system demos. Ensure customer and business needs are clearly represented and continuously reflected in delivery discussions. Be available to the delivery team to provide timely decisions and clarify requirements throughout the iteration. Through interactions with the delivery teams, seek continuous team improvement. Be transparent and manage expectations in all interactions within the team and with stakeholders to build a position of trust and openness of information.

We operate a hybrid working policy that requires a minimum of 2 days per week in the Oxford office.

About You

We're looking for someone with previous experience working as Business Analyst, Product Owner, or in a similar role, and have demonstratable experience working with third-party suppliers. To be successful in this role, you will ideally have/be:

Essential:

• Strong communication, influencing, and stakeholder management skills.
• Flexible, resourceful approach to working with distributed teams.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and disciplined approach to quality and delivery.
• Highly organized with the ability to handle and prioritize multiple, competing tasks and business needs.
• A proactive mindset toward emerging technologies, with a strong commitment to continuous learning, skill development, and applying innovative solutions to drive product excellence.
• Demonstrates integrity through open, honest, and transparent engagement in all interactions.

Desirable:

• Deep understanding of our digital platforms and products, feature development and delivery, including customer and market knowledge relevant to the product area.
• Proficiency in the use of analytical tools.
• Technical understanding, including software development methods and practices (technical coding skills not required).
• Understanding of software architectures.
• Knowledge of methodologies associated with digital product development and delivery, in particular Agile, delivery approaches and tooling.
• Agile experience or qualifications, experience of working in Fusion Teams.
• Knowledge of product and development management tools.
• Specific knowledge and skills with JIRA, Confluence, and Aha
• Knowledge of user-centred design principles.
• Experience in delivering WCAG accessibility guidelines
• Relevant qualification in Business Analysis or Product Ownership.

Benefits

We care about work/life balance here at OUP. With this in mind we offer 25 days' holiday that rises with service, plus bank holidays and Christmas closure (3-days) and a 35-hour working week. We are open to discussing flexibility in respect to working patterns, dependent on role. We also have a great variety of active employee networks and societies.

We help make your money go further by contributing to your pension up to 12%, offering loans and savings schemes through our partnership with Salary Finance, in addition to travel to work schemes and access to a wide range of local discounts.

This role comes with a discretionary annual payment.

Please see our Rewards and Recognition page for more information.

Please note this advert may be removed before the advertised end date, so we encourage you to apply as soon as possible.

We are committed to supporting diversity in our workforce, and ensuring an inclusive environment where all individuals can thrive. We seek to employ a workforce representative of the markets that we serve and encourage applications from all.